GUELPH, Ont. – Fresh off their third OUA championship in program history, the Guelph Gryphons men's soccer team will be looking to make a little more history this week in Ottawa when they head to the 2021 U SPORTS Men's Soccer Championship hosted by the Carleton Ravens.
Trying to claim their first ever men's soccer national title, the Gryphons will take part in the first quarterfinal of the tournament Thursday morning when they battle the Atlantic University Sport (AUS) runners-up, the Saint Mary's Huskies at 11am.
Winning three straight incredibly tense playoff matches, Guelph's squad showed plenty of poise and composer during their run to the 2021 Blackwood Cup. After fending off the Ontario Tech Ridgebacks in penalty kicks, the Gryphons then defeated the No. 3-nationally ranked (at the time) Carleton Ravens, 1-0, before taking down the No. 2-nationally ranked York Lions 3-2 in the final.
The Gryphon's path through those last two games has been well documented with Guelph keeper
Svyatoslav Artemenko needing to save a 94th minute penalty against Carleton, before the Gryphs had to fight off a spirited York comeback attempt in the late stages of the gold medal game.
Combined with the penalty kicks required to defeat Ontario Tech, the Gryphons certainly seem to be extremely well battle-tested heading in to the U SPORTS championship.
Not only do the Gryphs head to nationals with OUA gold around their necks following their pulsating 3-2 win over the York Lions Saturday afternoon at Alumni Stadium, but Guelph will also enter the tournament as the only undefeated team left in the country.
Led all season long by their fundamentally sound back-line, the Gryphons only allowed three goals during the 2021 regular season. And had only surrendered one goal in their first 288 minutes of the playoffs, before the Lions began their comeback bid. With 2021 OUA West Player of the Year,
Lucas Doros, along with 2021 OUA West All-Star,
Ian Vidovich helping to anchor their own defensive end, the Gryphons have proven to be arguably the hardest team to score on across the country.
On the attack, the Gryphs have used their depth to create problems. Despite having no one score more than three goals in the regular season, Guelph did have nine different players find the back of the net.
However, even with the scoring by committee approach, the Gryphons do have one forward coming into his own down the stretch. Coming on of late,
Owen McKee has been unstoppable in his past few matches. Gaining more and more trust from Gryphons head coach,
Keith Mason as the season progressed, McKee has rewarded that trust with a goal in both the OUA semi-final, as well as the final, giving him a total of four goals combined between the playoffs and regular season.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pitch, the Huskies will come into Thursday's contest on the heels of their own impressive playoff run. Although, in the end they came up one game short, St. Mary's took down UPEI 2-0 in the quarter-finals, before coming from behind to upset St. Francis Xavier 2-1 in the semis. First-year forward, Sean Freeman has been a key piece to the Huskies attack, scoring seven of the team's 24 goals. Accounting for another eight of those goals, both Sumit Malik and Cian Tousignant-Osiadhail each finished the 2021 regular season with four. Third-year keeper Jensen Brown started 11 of the Huskie's 12 regular season games, recording two clean-sheets, while allowing 14 goals.
The winner of Thursday morning's match will move on to the national semi-finals and take on the winner of Victoria and Montreal.
The match can be seen, along with the rest of the tournament on CBC Sports' digital platforms including cbcsports.ca, CBC Gem and the CBC Sports App.
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